Citation preview
www.ecologicalcitizen.net LONG ARTICLE
It was the right book at the right time. When I read Keeping the
Wild (Wuerthner et al., 2014) shortly after it was published,
I was nearing the completion of a personal journey to ecocentrism.1
This anthology brought together new and republished writings that
emphatically defended the protected-areas movement against the
attacks of Anthropocene boosters.2 At the same time, it provided a
deliciously radical challenge to the things I was beginning to
loathe in my life in a small city set in a human-dominated
landscape. I’m almost certain that I will never read a book that
influences me more strongly.
In regard to Earth’s biodiversity crisis – the focus of this
special issue – the message from that anthology and subsequent
related pieces is a compelling one. For the sake of wildlife, wild
places, and ecological processes, we need to protect all remaining
intact ecosystems (e.g. Watson et al., 2018), and we must also
scale back the negative impacts of modern human society on the
ecosphere (Crist, 2019), opening up opportunities for ecological
rebounding. As coherent as this is, though, a dangerous caricature
of ecocentrism can emerge from such a grand vision. The caricature,
which, if taken seriously, will harm not just the ecocentric
worldview’s credibility but
wildlife too is this: Ecocentrism calls for all land to be returned
to a self-willed state, free of major human intervention, except
where humans have their homes or are managing land to produce the
most essential of goods, such as food.3 As Batavia and Nelson
(2016) have noted:
This position is characteristic of what ethicists call “natural law
theory,” in which what is “natural” is right and ought to be. [This
is] often used to justify a “hands-off” approach to management or
nonintervention.
I reject this outlook’s inherent human– nature dualism, but in
doing so I’m mindful of the potential trap that is set when humans
are rolled into the concept of ‘natural’ applied here. The
poisoning of a river, say, would thus become ethically acceptable.
On the one hand, then, not all human interventions in a landscape
can be considered good just because humans are part of
nature.
On the other hand, it seems perverse from an ecological perspective
to automatically judge human intervention in landscapes as
necessarily bad, when examples abound of non-human species, from
African elephants to yellow meadow ants, shaping
‘Making hay’: A conditional defence on ecocentric grounds of
various co-created habitats
Joe Gray About the author
Joe is a field naturalist and eco-activist based in St Albans,
UK.
Citation
Gray J (2019) ‘Making hay’: A conditional defence on ecocentric
grounds of various co-created habitats. The Ecological Citizen
3(Suppl A): 43–54.
Keywords
Biodiversity; co-created habitats; conservation
This article begins with an argument and delimiting conditions for
the place of certain traditional anthropogenic, or ‘co-created’,
habitats within ecocentrically minded conservation. Next, four
examples of such co-created habitats are explored: lowland meadows,
heathland, coppiced woodland and old orchards. The examples are
drawn from the lowlands of Great Britain but their discussion has
geographically broader implications. Such habitats, it is argued,
have a place within an ecosphere that elsewhere evidences a major
stepping back of humans; within this wider context, they can act as
‘reservoirs’ from which biodiversity can radiate again once the
time comes. In other words, they represent a means of widening the
bottleneck through which life is passing. They also offer not only
a liberation from the destructive nature of approaches to land
management forged by industrialism but also a roadmap for a revival
of forgotten skills in a future culture of simplicity and
creativity.
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
www.ecologicalcitizen.net
habitats and engineering ecosystems. For just as these ants – to
use the example of the smaller of those creatures – build mounds
with altered soil properties that provide biodiversity-enriching
micro- niches (Boots and Clipson, 2013), there are well-known and
cherished examples of human interventions that, in a similar way,
can benefit biodiversity, at least on a local or regional
scale.
Hay meadows provide one example of such an opportunity, hence the
wordplay in this piece’s title. Later, I will consider in detail
these and several other instances of traditional anthropogenic
habitats that I feel can have a place within ecocentrically minded
conservation. As will be seen, changing economic circumstances mean
that the human interest in these habitats has shifted away from
production, opening up opportunities for an alternative focus.
Before this, I will offer a tentative set of conditions to delimit
my support for traditional anthropogenic habitats within the
framework of ecocentrism.
In proposing these conditions, I must stress that I am not clearing
an intellectual path towards treating the Earth as a global garden
(rambunctious or otherwise). First, on a pragmatic note, ecospheric
ecology is far too complex for us to hope for anything approaching
universal success in determining positive, gardening-type
conservation interventions, even if the vast financial resources
necessary for such gardening were channelled in its direction.
Secondly, on a philosophical level, evolution and other unguided
ecological dynamic processes are ethically good in their own right,
as well as being unrivalled in their creation of complexity and
diversity, and we should be neither quelling nor guiding them on a
grand scale. To do so would be to behave not as a “plain citizen
and member” of the “land-community,” in Aldo Leopold’s indelible
wording (Leopold, 1968: 204).
On the subject of grand interference in evolution specifically,
Christof Schenck (2015: 100) cautioned:
Human-directed conservation is changing species in the long run.
This means that
even in conservation areas, set aside for nature protection, humans
take a lead in evolutionary processes, with limited understanding
of the results.
Responding to this warning, I proposed, with Patrick Curry, the
concept of conservation “exit strategies” (Gray and Curry, 2015).4
In short, this involves drawing up intervention plans for protected
areas that still meet the short-term, often urgent, needs of
wildlife (e.g. through placing bird boxes), while also including a
longer-term vision to allow these needs to be met without human
direction (by letting trees – using the same example – reach
maturity and senescence so that nesting holes abound). In areas
where agents of major disturbance, such as wild free- roaming
bovines, have been extirpated, reintroductions of ecologically
similar life forms will be necessary for conservation exit
strategies to be fully realized. The empirical examples discussed
later are drawn from the context of Great Britain, and so it is
pertinent to mention that the aurochs – the wild ancestor of
domestic cattle – was extirpated from this island, owing to habitat
loss and other factors, at some point between 2000 and 3500 years
ago (Wright, 2013).
By raising here the ecological importance of lost agents of
disturbance, I have looped back to the subject of traditional
anthropogenic habitats: human interventions, as will be discussed
in the empirical examples, are of a greater significance as
biodiversity-enhancing disturbance processes in light of our
ancestors’ extirpation of certain other habitat shapers.
An ecocentric delimitation of traditional anthropogenic habitats
Immediately below, I present four conditions that delimit my
support for traditional anthropogenic habitats within
ecocentrically minded conservation. The first three refer to
individual sites, while the last relates to such sites en bloc. I
offer this as an unofficial addendum to Keeping the Wild and a
counter to the dangerous
44 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
“Evolution and other unguided
ecological dynamic processes are
as being unrivalled in their creation
of complexity and diversity, and we
should be neither quelling nor
guiding them on a grand scale.”
The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 45
www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various
co-created habitats
potential caricaturing of ecocentrism that I mentioned earlier. n
Quality: Such sites should be more
biodiverse than they might otherwise be – over a short or long time
frame – if interventions ceased. The biodiversity considered in
this qualitative reckoning should comprise native species and long-
established non-invasive alien species. Species that are rare,
especially on a global scale, should be given greater weighting in
considerations.
n Focus: The focus of the interventions should be supporting
biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. Material goods that are
available and non-material instrumental values that can be derived
(including spiritual pleasure and preservation of cultural
heritage) should be celebrated, but they should never be key
drivers.
n Future: Opportunities for reducing human intervention in the long
term without a negative overall impact on biodiversity should be
pursued if they present themselves.
n Extent: Taken as a whole, these sites should not dominate on a
landscape scale. Rather, they should be set within a wider
landscape that evidences a major stepping back of Homo
sapiens.
This set of conditions is intended as a skeleton for future work. I
will leave the philosophers to pick at the bones, but in the hope
that at least something will remain, I will press on with real-life
cases of what can be called co-created habitats.4 When I walk in
these habitats, I’m aware of the presence of human hand, but my
experience is of a place overwhelmingly dominated by non- human
life. This is a good balance when one considers humans as plain
citizens.
The examples are all habitats that I can get to on foot from my
home near the River Ver, a chalk stream that cuts a minor incision
in the geologically diverse hunk of rock known as Great Britain.
They are not unique, though, to my local area or this medium-sized
Atlantic island. And there will be different co-created habitats in
other places to which the argument I am making may apply.
Example habitats Lowland meadows At temperate latitudes, grassland
typically occurs in places that are too dry or too far above sea
level for trees to dominate (Rackham, 1994), or where there is
sustained pressure from herbivores. Great Britain is mostly low
lying and relatively wet and its land thus tends to a forested
state. Non-anthropogenic fires play only a minimal role in the
island’s ecology, while the challenges to tree establishment – and
prospects for grassland – presented by free-roaming grazers have
lessened in recent millennia through the decline and extirpation of
the aurochs (Vera, 2000), among other factors.6 Under these
conditions, humans equipped with scythes emerged as significant
agents of species- rich grassland, in the form of meadows (Figure
1).
For the two millennia between their “pre-Roman origins and
post-Medieval demise,” meadows were “a key component of traditional
farming and were often more valued than any other land” (Peterken,
2013: 119). They allowed farmers to exploit – typically on soils
that were neither strongly acidic nor strongly calcareous – the
flush of growth that comes in spring and summer in order to remove
plant material that could be prepared and stored, as hay, to
provide winter fodder for domestic animals. Farmers would have been
well aware that the scything prevented the encroachment of scrub
and the establishment of mature
“Opportunities for reducing human intervention in the long term
without a negative overall impact on biodiversity should be pursued
if they present themselves.”
Figure 1. Wild flowers and grasses in a lowland meadow.
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
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trees, a development that would have been very difficult for them
to reverse in a time with no chainsaws or heavy machinery. What
they would not have known, though, is that this removal of matter
counteracted the deposition of nutrients from the excreta of
winter-grazing domestic animals and from the atmosphere, keeping
fertility at a ‘Goldilocks level’ that gave many plant species a
chance to thrive and stopped runaway species from dominating. This,
in turn, supported a richness and abundance of insects and other
life forms.
In modern agriculture, farmers have tended towards specialization,
external inputs and monoculture, and more profitable land uses than
meadows have emerged (with some combination of drainage, ploughing,
re-seeding, herbicides and nutrient appli- cations being used to
adopt them). Under these conditions, the total area of species-
rich meadows in Great Britain has declined by 97% since the 1930s
(Plantlife, 2018); a major contributor to the steep downward trend
was the need, during the Second World War, to bring more land under
the plough for growing cereals on a suddenly isolated, and densely
populated, island. Despite the scale of the loss of this habitat,
it went relatively unnoticed for a long time. As Trevor Dines,
Botanical Specialist at the charity Plantlife, observed (Plantlife,
2018):
People tie themselves to trees as the chainsaws arrive, but nobody
lies down amongst meadow buttercups in protest at the ploughing up
of ancient meadows.
The outcry against the plummeting of meadows was slow in coming:
calls for their conservation only began to mount in the late 1960s
(Peterken, 2013). While losses continued, the efforts of the early
advocates and their followers has helped some meadows to emerge
through the bottleneck as nature reserves, and hobbyist purchases
have also played a role in stemming the decline. The finances have
changed to such an extent from those of traditional agriculture,
however, that removing hay is now something that can cost money, or
rely on the goodwill of volunteer scythers,
rather than generating income (Peterken, 2013). In other words, hay
as a product is not the primary purpose. This means that the focus
for humans in this example of co- creation can be on supporting
favourable conditions for a range of wild grasses and flowers and
the other life that they sustain, rather than on maximizing yield
or palatability of hay.
There seem to be as many theories for what the best practice is in
meadow conservation as there are people with a view on the subject,
and efforts to synthesize scientific evidence have not given clear
answers (Tälle et al., 2018). A broadly supported overall approach
would be a single late annual hay cut, allowing plants to set seed
and insects to complete their life cycles, and avoiding disturbance
of ground-nesting birds (Peterken, 2013). This would preferably be
performed not with a mechanical mower but by a team of scythers
(see Kingsnorth [2012]), as this is less destructive to the life of
the meadow. The fodder will be of very poor quality – formerly,
late-cut hay would have been used as bedding for animals. As
mentioned above, though, this is not a major issue in a
conservation context, and the material still has potential uses
within an ecological culture and economy, such as in insulating the
walls of eco-friendly buildings. There are, however, a couple of
more significant caveats. The first applies to a restoration
context, in which earlier and more frequent hay cutting may be
needed over a number of years in order to counteract the legacy of
nutrient applications and the resulting species-poor grassland. The
second is that a major change from existing practices may make
conditions unfavourable for the species that a meadow currently
supports (Buglife, 2019b), and the plants and other life forms for
which the altered meadow might be suitable may be slow to colonize
it or never find it (e.g. Woodcock et al., 2012). As Aldo Leopold
wrote in his journal: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first
precaution of intelligent tinkering” (Leopold, 1993: 146). A
compromise might be to adopt a more heterogeneous approach, in
which existing practices are maintained
46 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
“The outcry against the plummeting of meadows was slow
in coming.”
www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various
co-created habitats
in only a part of the meadow (personal communication with Ian
Carle). Further heterogeneity will result from so-called aftermath
grazing, in which domestic animals feed on the meadow in winter. In
a conservation context, this can be done with a low density of
grazing animals, very high welfare standards and a prudent approach
to medication; the dung alone can support many species (Laurence,
1954).7
The role of lowland meadows in supporting biodiversity As George
Peterken (2013: 219) has noted: “Meadows are paradoxical. They are
amazingly diverse at a small scale, but [they] contribute little to
regional diversity, because their constituent species have been
drawn from various habitats, and most still inhabit versions of
those habitats or scraps of meadow-like vegetation.” In other
words, their role is not so much in helping save threatened species
as it is in supporting an ethic of bio-proportionality, in which
both diversity and abundance matter deeply (Mathews, 2016). Just as
the leaf litter of mature woodland teems with springtails and other
invertebrates, one only need examine a handful of flowers or a few
grass seed-heads to get a sense of the tremendous abundance of life
that is to be found in meadows (Figure 2).
Heathland Heathland is unploughed, open or semi- open land on which
plants in the group called heaths grow, the most common of which is
ling (also known as heather). Beyond heaths, the characteristic
flora of this habitat includes bracken, as well as shrubs such as
gorse (Figure 3). As Oliver Rackham summarized – slightly
underestimating, perhaps, the openness of a landscape in which
aurochs roamed (Vera, 2000) – heathlands are “composed entirely of
wild plants, yet they would hardly exist without past and
continuing human activities” (Rackham, 1994: 130). This is the
essence of a co-created habitat.
Heathland soil is typically acidic, sandy and nutrient poor and was
unsuitable for traditional farming. In the Middle Ages,
Figure 2. The grass-bug Megaloceroea recticornis, one of many
insects that can be very abundant in meadows (photographed at
Chorleywood Common, UK).
Figure 3. A gorse shieldbug on gorse, a typical heathland
shrub.
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
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heathlands were nevertheless used for many purposes. Gorse was
removed for fuel as it produced an efficient hot blaze for ovens
and home-heating fires. Ling served as both a fuel and a low-grade
thatch. And bracken was used as a fuel, as litter for livestock, as
thatch, as an ingredient in potash (for glassmaking, soaps and
detergents), and also for a range of minor functions from
contraception to rain- making. Traditional heathland products fell
out of common usage in the 19th century – although there is
potential for a revival of some uses within an ecological culture
and economy. Furthermore, farming technology that arose in the
agricultural revolution made it possible to cultivate previously
uneconomic land such as heathlands (Rackham, 1994). In the 20th
century, the decline was exacerbated by the timber industry’s fad
for planting non-native conifers and the intervention
of developers. All told, around 85% of Great Britain’s heathland
has been lost over a span of 150 years (Wildlife Trusts,
2019).
As with meadows, many surviving examples of heathland are now
nature reserves, where a chief concern is that the habitat will
quickly scrub over and develop into secondary woodland without
removal of some plant growth. As is the case with open grassland,
discussed in the previous and following sections, a relevant factor
here is the extirpation of the aurochs and the resulting shift in
ecological dynamics to favour closed-canopy conditions. In the New
Forest National Park – a large matrix of woodland, bog and
heathland – the grazing of wild-roaming ponies (Figure 4) and other
mammals keeps significant areas open, but other heathlands
generally receive less attention from grazers. Some combination of
rotational cutting, scraping of the
48 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
Figure 4. Wild-roaming ponies contribute to the open areas of acid
grassland in the New Forest, UK.
The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 49
www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various
co-created habitats
soil surface and controlled burning may be undertaken on heathlands
to offer a heterogeneous habitat with a multitude of niches
(Buglife, 2019a). An important goal for conservationists in
removing plant material is to prevent a build-up of nitrogen from
atmospheric deposition, which would work against an established
plant community that thrives in nutrient- poor conditions. As with
meadows, there are many different viewpoints on what the optimum
approach might be.
The role of heathland in supporting biodiversity Heathlands, while
providing a home for many common species, also support a number of
threatened species. These include birds like nightjars,
stone-curlews and Dartford warblers (Figure 5), reptiles such as
smooth snakes (Figure 6), and many rare invertebrates (Rackham,
1994; Buglife;
Figure 5. A Dartford warbler on heathland (photo: James West [CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0;
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/]).
Figure 6. A smooth snake on heathland (photo: Paul Ritchie [CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0;
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/]).
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
www.ecologicalcitizen.net
2019a). Regarding the last of these, the hard-packed sandy banks
that can be found on heathlands (Figure 7) are invaluable for the
nest construction of many solitary bees and wasps (Buglife; 2019a).
And, more broadly, as Oliver Rackham (1994: 146) cautioned,
heathland is a “special responsibility” of Great Britain, since
“the Dutch, Danes and Swedes have been even more single-minded in
destroying their heaths, and most of what is left in Europe is
ours.”
Coppiced woodland Coppiced woodland comprises a co-created series
of compartments felled in different years to create a heterogeneous
patchwork of growth stages; there are also typically present some
large trees with single trunks that are not cut as part of the
cycle. In the long-established practice of coppicing, trees are cut
to their base, or stool, and new growth sprouts from dormant buds.8
Coppicing and regrowth (Figure 8), which probably evolved as a
response to damage by large herbivores, also greatly extends the
longevity of individual trees – in the case of common ash from,
perhaps, two centuries to eight (Rackham, 2012).
An active coppicing cycle involves stools being re-coppiced before
the stems have become too difficult for a woodcutter to chop using
a simple hand tool. Coppiced stems can be used for fuel, including
as charcoal, and also in traditional craft-making; they could be a
welcome item in a future ecological culture and economy. Indeed,
for traditional woodcutters, the coppicing cycle gave a steady
supply of essential materials. As an accidental consequence, it
also kept glades as shifting but ever-present features of woods,
supporting a range of heat- loving animals and light-loving plants.
The animals track the shifting openness, while the plants thrive
periodically within each compartment for a period of two or three
years (Rackham, 2012), before bramble and coppice regrowth shade
them out.
A changing economy and new technology saw traditional woodland
practices generally either replaced by modern commercial forestry
operations or abandoned, so that between 1900 and 1970 there was an
estimated ten-fold decline in the area of actively coppiced
woodland in Great Britain (Fuller and Warren, 1993). Coppicing does
continue, though, on many nature reserves and in some woods owned
by hobbyists or individuals striving for green
self-sufficiency.
The role of coppiced woodland in supporting biodiversity Woodland
openings, such as those that occur with coppicing, can be
hotspots
50 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
Figure 7. A sandy bank on Oxshott Heath, UK, which is used by many
species of solitary bees and wasps for nest construction.
Figure 8. Regrowth after coppicing in Stanmer Park Great Wood, UK
(photo: Dominic Alves [CC BY 2.0;
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 51
www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various
co-created habitats
for a range of flora and fauna. They are generally sheltered, may
have dead wood present, offer a great nectar resource, and
typically have soils that have not been subjected to fertilizers.
These openings are especially important for rare wild flowers like
wood vetch, crested cow-wheat and oxlip (Figure 9), as well as
insects such as woodland-dwelling fritillary butterflies (Fuller
and Warren, 1993). Nightingales are among the threatened birds that
may benefit from the dense understory that develops after the open
phase of the cycle. The hazel dormouse (Figure 10), another
threatened species, also benefits from the structure of coppiced
woodland, and its decline has been linked to the reduction in
coppicing (Mammal Society, 2019).
Old orchards Many of the considerations raised in the section on
lowland meadows apply to old orchards, because they can be a haven
for wild grasses and flowers, but there is also something distinct
about them from the three habitat types discussed above: Figure 9.
Oxlip in Hayley Wood, UK, a woodland where coppicing is
practised.
Figure 10. A hazel dormouse, a species that can benefit from the
structure of coppiced woodland (photo: Frank Vassen [CC BY 2.0;
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]).
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
www.ecologicalcitizen.net
domesticated species – namely, fruit trees – form a significant
portion of the biomass (Figure 11). Importantly, many decades of
nurturing the fruit trees of old orchards has seen them live
through maturity to develop senescent features such as decaying
branches and rot holes, which are essential to the life cycle of
many invertebrates. These, in turn, provide food for bats and other
wildlife.
As with the habitat types discussed above, changing technologies
and economic circumstances have driven a steep decline in orchards,
and many surviving examples
are now nature reserves. The fruit picked each year may be eaten
fresh or used for making juices, alcoholic beverages and food
products. These items represent a bounty that can be enjoyed by
local residents in harmony with the needs of other species and,
like products from coppiced stems, should be an essential component
of a future ecological culture and economy. In addition, the
abundant windfall apples that are left on the ground provide
sustenance for birds and other life forms. Moreover, since yield is
not a concern on nature reserves, there is no motivation to use
insecticides and life-destroying ‘tree washes’.
The role of old orchards in supporting biodiversity Old orchards
abound in common species, and are thus refuges for abundance, but
they also support certain threatened invertebrates, such as the
noble chafer (People’s Trust for Endangered Species, 2019; Figure
12). The larval stage of this beetle feeds on rotting heartwood
within live trunks and branches, favouring mature fruit trees.
Another threatened species that depends on rotting heartwood and is
associated with this habitat is the orchard tooth fungus, while the
old bark of the fruit trees provides a substrate for a plethora of
lichens and bryophytes (People’s Trust for Endangered Species,
2019).
Role within a future ecological culture and economy A recurring
theme in the examples of co- created habitats has been their
potential role in a future ecological culture and economy.
Significantly, each has cultural heritage predating the watershed
of the industrial revolution. Each was thus born in an era of
simple tools, such as handsaws, scythes and rakes, rather than
great machines. And each offers not only a liberation from the
destructive nature of approaches to land management forged by
industrialism but also a roadmap for the “revival” of “forgotten
skills” that Victor Postnikov (2018: 148) has called for in his
vision for a culture of simplicity and creativity. Similarly, the
co-created
52 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
Figure 11. Old apple trees in an orchard in Highfield Park,
UK.
Figure 12. A noble chafer, a beetle associated with old orchards
(photo: gailhampshire [CC BY 2.0;
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]).
The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019 53
www.ecologicalcitizen.net A conditional defence of various
co-created habitats
habitats discussed represent pieces in the puzzle for John Michael
Greer’s (2009) vision of an ‘ecotechnic’ future.
In addition to the benefits of co-created habitats for non-humans
and humans that have been described above, it should be mentioned
that these places also offer great scope for fostering connections
with nature – through immersion, learning, working, participating
and simply breathing – including in people who may not have been
lucky enough to have previously had such ‘nature exposure’ in their
lives.9 These connections are essential, I believe, if an
ecological culture is to become widely established.
The wider landscape context As I note in the ‘Extent’ condition of
my delimitation, traditional anthropogenic habitats should be set
within an ecosphere that evidences a major stepping back of humans.
As part of this stepping back, our agricultural practices must be
re-shaped to support and mesh harmoniously with non-human life,
rather than obliterating it, and we must greatly reduce our
plundering of aquatic life. Extractivism must be superseded by a
circular material economy. And independently of reforestation
efforts – for which only a ‘one-time carbon win’ is available in
any honest accounting system (Rackham, 2012) – we must dramatically
reduce our release of gases contributing to climate
breakdown.
At this wider scale, then, traditional human-shaped habitats – like
human settlements and ecological agriculture – should form
relatively small patches within a greater rewilded landscape. But
this does mean that their role is insignificant. First, co-created
habitats are unique and thus complement the variety within a wider
rewilded landscape. Secondly, they can serve as ‘reservoirs’ from
which biodiversity can radiate again once the time comes. Thirdly,
they are an insurance policy. On this last point, I believe that
ecocentrically minded conservationists must be realistic about the
chances of achieving large-scale rewilding and keep options open
for biodiversity in a landscape
that retains a strong human presence during a protracted
collapse.
Closing remark At a time when the conservation movement is
struggling for traction on a greased slope, I believe that we
should see the types of co-created habitat that I have discussed –
tempered by my proposed delimiting conditions – as a gift. We know
that they can offer broad benefits for non-human life, especially
when they are not being driven by narrowly focused human needs,
and, along with protected wild areas, they represent an additional
effective means of widening the bottleneck through which life is
passing. n
Acknowledgement I am very grateful to Eileen Crist and Chris Gibson
for their constructive comments on this article.
Notes 1 I describe this mental journey in Gray (2017).
2 In this piece, I have side-stepped the term ‘wilderness’ and the
ongoing debate on its reality and relevance. To properly dissect
the various arguments would require an article in its own right,
and: (a) I doubt I’d do the task justice; (b) there is already an
excellent examination of the topic from an ecocentric perspective
in Crist (2019: 113–36).
3 This caricature is propagated by conservationists who seek to
discredit all intervention-based conservation, as Christof Schenck
(2015) seems to do in Protecting the Wild, the generally stellar
follow-up volume to Keeping the Wild.
4 Up till this point, I have used somewhat technical language in
order to help set the ideas within the broader literature, and I
have drawn terms from the lexicons of conservation and wildlife
ecology, which have been shaped by human– nature dualism and
anthropocentrism. A word I have used particularly often is
‘intervention’, favouring it over more domineering alternatives
such as ‘management’ and ‘stewardship’. The term ‘intervention’
fails, though, to erode that dualism and fully support ecocentrism.
I am thus grateful to Eileen Crist, co-editor of the present
special issue, for suggesting an alternative: co- creation.
5 A lighter alternative to conservation ‘exit strategies’ has been
proposed by Shefferson et al. (2018): “Conservation biologists
should incorporate evolutionary prediction into management planning
to prevent the evolutionary domestication of the species that they
are trying to protect.”
“Co-created habitats can serve as ‘reservoirs’ from which
biodiversity can radiate again once the time comes.”
A conditional defence of various co-created habitats
www.ecologicalcitizen.net
54 The Ecological Citizen Vol 3 Suppl A 2019
“At a time when the conservation
movement is struggling for
traction on a greased slope, I believe that
we should see the types of co-created habitat that I have
discussed as a gift.”
6 The extinction of the wild boar and local extirpations of red
deer would also have been significant for ecological dynamics.
Countering this somewhat in recent decades has been the increasing
populations of several species of wild deer.
7 For readers who are against the idea of using domestic animals,
it should be noted that scything alone is adequate for humans to
fulfil their part in co-creation.
8 I am aware that some readers will be against the idea of
repeatedly cutting trees back to their stools, but I would
challenge them to offer greener alternatives to the materials that
are taken from the wood and also stress that some wood removal is
needed, in any case, in order for the shifting glades to persist.
Additionally, I would refer these readers to my set of conditions
that delimit such habitats within ecocentrically minded
conservation.
9 Conversely, there is a need to guard against excessive
recreational pressure on such habitats. Horse riding and motorcycle
use can be very detrimental to heathlands, to give one examples
(Buglife, 2019a).
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